


Ex Paludem

by SierraBravo



Category: Original Work
Genre: Body Horror, F/F, Monster Hunters, Multi, Vampires, Werewolves, creepy angel creatures, cryptids & cryptozoologists
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-27
Updated: 2021-02-14
Packaged: 2021-03-12 13:41:16
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 7,203
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29011452
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SierraBravo/pseuds/SierraBravo
Comments: 2
Kudos: 1





	1. Community

There are issues to being a werewolf; of course there are, how could there not be? But they are not necessarily what you would expect. The turning into a big semi bipedal wolf during the full moon is kind of mostly fine. You get to run around a go a bit feral, hunt some rabbits and get a lot of fresh air. That’s not so bad. Rather, it’s the bit that’s when you’re still human shaped that’s a bit of the struggle, at least for Emily. The three massive slashes that start at her forehead and go to the back of her skull are pretty obvious. The scars are just a year old, but are still stark against her pale brown skin. Most of it can he hidden by her hair, but they still cover half her forehead, and people tend to look. And ask. Bear attack while camping, she usually says. Not too far from the truth. Her eyes, too, have changed. They used to be a warm brown, but they’ve changed, gradually, gotten lighter and more golden until they are almost amber. She says they’re contacts when people ask, but anyone looking closely enough can see that’s not the case.

“Ow, fuck,” she mutters, as she cuts herself on the razor again, blood washing down into the shower drain.

Another thing is the hair. Ever since she was bit, her body hair has gotten thicker, darker, spreading to the edges of her face, places it never was before. And she doesn’t mind that, in particular. It’s even one of the easier things to explain, saying she’s working on getting a PCOS diagnosis, but it is mildly irritating. But it does make people stare, and intense scrutiny of her physical appearance is something she would like to avoid.

“Emily,” comes a shout, followed by enthusiastic knocking at the door, “for fuck’s sake, I need to get to work, too.”

“One sec,” she shouts in reply, giving it up as a job half done and turning the water off.

She wraps a towel around herself, puts some toothpaste on her brush and sticks it in her mouth and opens the door, steam enveloping her impatient room mate. 

“Shorry,” she says, around the chunk of plastic in her mouth.

Her teeth, too, or at least her canines, are significantly longer and sharper than they used to be, but not more than can be explained away. The most irritating effect, though, by far, is her allergy to silver. She has a large collection of silver jewellery, but within half an hour of wearing any of them she gets painful rashes. This can, of course, also be explained, plenty of people have bad reactions to all kinds of jewellery, but it is just personally upsetting to Emily because she likes silver, and gold tones don’t suit her nearly as well. It’s not the right vibe. Steel isn’t either, a bit too harsh and clinical.

Her nails have started growing, too, getting thicker and darker, noticeably enough that she paints them to disguise it. They’re not claws, not yet, but they are definitely not normal looking. Nothing, again, that would make her stand out as actually inhuman, of course, but it is a collection of traits that makes her noticeable, and that’s not something she wants these days. Her room mate has already commented on her not wearing her silver jewellery any more.

There are other changes, too, that are, if anything, positives. Her sense of smell, even when human, is a lot more acute. Her hearing, too. And any wounds heal a lot faster than they used to, which is nice. Not instantaneously, not like in films, but within say two days what would usually take a week. And it’s useful, too, as after the full moon she usually wakes up covered in scratches. Fur not quite thick enough to protect her entirely.

It is, however, quite lonely. Lonely werewolf girl. Hah. She read that. Not really her experience. But it is isolating, not having anyone she can talk about it with, no one she can trust enough to tell the truth. It’s quite a big part of herself to hide. A different closet, this time round, and not really one she can leave. At least not until now. She found, a few weeks ago, a deeply buried forum of people claiming to be other victims of the supernatural. Or parts of it, now, really. Like a sort of support group. And tonight, after work, she’s going.

Emily works in a bookshop. It’s the sort of job she had sort of romanticised before, as being infinitely superior to working in a supermarket, but her first day robbed her of that illusion. It involves less mopping up of suspicious substances, yes, but the customers are just a bad and noisy. It does smell less bad, though, which she appreciates, because a side effect of having a better sense of smell is a new and exciting way to experience sensory overload.

It’s a pretty good day. She’s only got a six hour shift, and it’s the start of the semester, so she gets a lot of students who actually knows what books they are looking for, and the only downside is having to see their devastated faces every time she tells them the total. Which she understands. She’s glad she’s done with that.

The place, the support group thing, is really difficult to find. It’s at night, about two hours or so after sunset, which makes sense. Emily isn’t totally sure what to expect from it, what sort of people she will find there. Some part of her worries that it’s some sort of trap. She doesn’t know if there are people who hunt- well. People like her. Monsters? Creatures? But it is so very lonely to not be able to tell anyone. To have no one to be able to confide in. And she finds that she is willing to risk it, however much her heart is beating faster than it should, her palms sweaty and itchy.

The first place she comes to is empty. It’s what looks like a shut down church. Which is odd, because she’s pretty sure there was a hint about vampires being welcome. Then again, the religion thing might not be true. Certainly there are things about werewolves that films and books say that aren’t true. At least not for her. Maybe there are several species? Variations? If anything, if this isn’t a terrifying trap leading to her own murder or getting trapped in some sort of government lab, it’s a chance to learn. To find people like her, dealing with the same issues, yes, but also just to figure out a little more about what is real. Because if she turns into a wolf once a month, what else is possible? What else is out there? Are ghosts real? Vampires? Zombies? Whatever Frankenstein’s creature is? Faeries? While Emily has always had an enthusiasm for fantasy, obviously after she find out she was a part of it now, she has gone on a deeper dive. Specifically all media about werewolves, but there is a lot of overlap. And she has a lot of ideas. And questions.

She finds, after looking around the place for a bit, a piece of paper with an address written on it, stuck behind a brick next to the wall. It’s got what looks like a poorly doodled drop of something (presumably blood), and a crescent moon on it, which she assumes means it’s the right place. She tucks it back in place after typing the address into her phone, and getting directions for what shouldn’t be more than a ten minute walk. 

When she arrives at the address listed, it fails to be so obliging as to exist. There is no place that fits the number of the address, though this is where her map tells her it should be. She walks up and down the street a few times, looking, until the wind changes, and she catches the faint scent of something both familiar and strange. Something sort of like herself. She has not smelled another werewolf before, but this seems to be it. So she follows it, through an alley into what seems to be an empty parking lot, and behind what seems to be a strategic grouping of over filled dumpsters, there is a door. It’s twenty minutes past the time when the meeting was supposed to start, now, and she spends another five minutes outside, debating whether to go in. It’s clearly not a place meant to easily be found. The door is painted in the exact shade of dirty grey as the wall, the same graffiti flowing seamlessly over it. If it’s this hidden, it must be real, right? So finally, heart pounding, she gets up the courage and knocks.

It’s a while before anyone answers, and she has turned away when the door starts to creep open. 

“What’s the password?” a voice hisses.

“Uhh,” she responds, unprepared for this.

There is a moment of silence, and Emily tries to see anything, but it is pitch black inside. Then, there is a brief sniffing sound. 

“Just kidding,” the voice comes again, this time in a much more normal tone. 

There is the sound of a click, and the door swings open, the inside illuminated now by a single bare bulb hanging from the ceiling. A woman is standing behind it, and apart from her eyes, pitch black, sclera and all, she looks like a normal middle aged woman, terrible hair style and all.

“Come in, we’ve just been getting started.”

She glances around outside before closing and locking the door behind Emily.

“Just for safety, you understand,” she says, giving Emily a friendly and fanged smile.

“We’ve had issues with hunters,” she tells Emily casually, as if she hasn’t just confirmed one of her worst fears.

“Right,” she responds, unsure what to say, “is that why the misleads, too?”

“It is,” the woman confirms, leading her through a series of dark hallways before emerging into a large room.

It is not very brightly lit, and from the cobwebs in the corners it is clear this place isn’t in regular use. Unless they’re just there for the ambiance. Might be the case, really. In the centre of the room there is a circle of chairs, most of them filled, and in a corner is a table with thermoses, cardboard cups and packets of biscuits.

“We’ve got some new blood,” she announces to the group, smiling at her own joke, as all the people turn to face Emily.

She smiles uncomfortably, having hoped to either arrive with everyone else or sneak in quietly, but it’s too late to do anything about it now. Well, other than lie in bed when she gets home and replaying it in her head, feeling stupid, debating whether she could have done anything differently, whether she can go back. But she needs this, at it seems genuine. In here, the scents are both stronger and stranger. There are two people she feels pretty sure are werewolves, and the remaining nine smell.. odd. Sort of dead. So. Vampires?

“Welcome, hi, hello,” comes an uncoordinated chorus of greetings, slightly monotone.

“You want to introduce yourself?” the lady asks.

“Uh,” Emily says, suddenly unable to think of a single relevant fact about herself, any way to say it that doesn’t say super dumb.

She stares, frozen, at the group. A man, who looks to be about her age, with a frankly ridiculous amount of curly dark red hair on the top of his head, golden eyes, gives her an understanding smile and speaks up.

“Why don’t we start?” he suggests, “I’m Sam. I’m a vampire. Been one for about… about three years now. And I’ve been coming here for a few months.”

She gives him a grateful smile and he winks, as the people go around, saying their names, which she immediately forget, and how long they’ve been what they are, and then she has a nice easy template to tell them her name and that she has been a werewolf for a little over a year. No one has been bitten for more than five years, which is interesting, every one left alone by whoever bit them with a single exception. One of the two werewolves was bitten by the other one. Consensually, apparently, the two men being married and apparently wanting to share the experience. Which is very sweet. The “oldest” one of them has still only been one for two years, though, so she doesn’t know whether they have that much experience from which she can learn.

The concept, it seems, is as much social as it is to learn and figure out this world they have been left in, these strange powers and changes that (almost) none of them asked for, and yet they all have to deal with. It devolves into people just talking to each other, after a while, and Emily, uncomfortable once more, as is her pre-bite power, walks over to the table in the corner, pouring herself a cup of coffee and grabbing a biscuit, dunking it in the coffee. It’s not great. She fights the urge to pick up her phone, when the man from earlier walks over. Sam? Sam. Yeah. He’s wearing a combination of neon colours that is very bold, and she can only admire his fashion courage. It looks good, though, somehow. This close, she can spot the two little bite marks on the side of his neck. He must notice her looking.

“Yeah, they’re a bit subtler for us, huh? I mean, I’m assuming this,” he drags his fingers across his forehead to mimic her scars, “is the werewolf thing?”

“Oh. Uh, yeah. Possibly the most inconvenient place. Not very nice of whoever bit me. Or, well, scratched, I’m assuming, given the shape. It goes all the way to the back of my head.”

“Ah. You don’t remember what happened to you either?”

He gets a cup and fills it from one of the thermoses marked O negative. Which is kind of wild.

“What?” he asks, but his voice is friendly, “never seen a vampire before?”

“I mean, no. Not before- not before today. Never seen anyone else not… Not human, I guess.”

“Oh. Yeah. It’s, uh. It’s pretty lonely. I, uh, I woke up in a morgue, in one of those cold locker things, after a night out. Complete black out of what happened after the third bar, and then bam. Wake up in a box two days later. Had a panic attack thinking I was going to suffocate in there. Got out, finally, to see they had done an autopsy on me. Which, is that not the most fucked up thing?”

“Oh,” she says, overwhelmed by this, “oh. Yeah, that’s- that’s pretty bad. I was, uh, I was attacked on my way home from work, I’m pretty sure. Tried to take a shortcut through the park, not doing that again, and woke up in the hospital the next day. Don’t remember seeing anything. But that seems significantly less traumatic than the morgue thing, now I’m saying it out loud.”

“Eh,” he shrugs, “It’s all pretty bad, I think. I was lucky to wake up where I did, though. I saw the marks on my neck, felt my fangs and I’d watched enough horror movies to know what was going on. So I managed to like, it was at night, see, so less people around, so I managed to find out where they stored the blood bags for people and stole a bunch.”

“Is that- those are for sick people, though,” she argues, in what she herself realises is a rather absurd bout of outrage.

He frowns.

“They cut me up and, I don’t know, rearranged my organs or stuff. I was feeling pretty sick too. Meant to help people who need it, right, and I did.”

“I, uh, yeah, I guess that’s a pretty good point. And without killing people, which is nice.”

He grins, a hint of the blood he’s drinking lingering on a fang. Very vampiric, against his very pale skin.

“Yeah. Animal blood works too, though, which was nice to figure out. I don’t particularly want to start killing people.”

“Oh. That’s good. Are you-” she begins, but is interrupted by the loud scraping of chair legs against the floor, the shuffling of jackets.

“Ah, yeah. Done for tonight, I think,” he says, “but we meet every two weeks. Here, uh, give me your phone.”

She looks at him questioningly.

“So I can type in my number,” he adds, “in case you need to, you know. Have some questions about being a creature of the night before then.”

“Oh! Right. Thank you,” she replies, handing it over, “I appreciate it. It’s kind of intimidating here, to be honest.”

He laughs.

“It really isn’t, when you get to know people, I promise. Least scary monsters I know. Also the only ones, but hey.”

“I hope so,” she agrees, “it might just be me. Probably is. It usually is. But again, thank you.”

“No problem,” he assures her, before they are all ushered out into the night.

No one turns into a bat and flies off, she notes. Several have put on sunglasses and dark hoods, and everyone disappears in a different direction. Emily gets onto a bus heading home, forgetting to put her music on, forgetting to buy a ticket. Forgetting to do anything other than try to work through what she has learned. She is not alone. Granted, it was always wildly unlikely she was the only one, but oh, it is a relief to to know. To have met others. To know that there are people she can go to, can ask, can finally, finally talk to about all these fucked up things that are going on, the problems unique to her condition.


	2. Loneliness

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sorry. You don't have to read this, and I promise I will update my fics soon.

Two weeks later, Emily talks to the werewolves. They seem lovely. Two men in their late fifties, both of whom look like they might have been part of the black metal scene thirty years ago, left the fashion behind and kept the hair and beard without ever getting a shave or haircut in the intervening decades. Or maybe lycanthropy has had twice the time to make them hairier too. They don’t really have any good secrets or advice for her. Their experience with the symptoms of lycantrophy is similar to her, which is, she supposes, reassuring, but she had hoped for something more. Something helpful.

“Hey, do you mind if I ask, what was the first time like?”

“Sorry?”

She is talking to the vampire again. Sam. Her purpose in going here had definitely been to connect with other werewolves, if possible, but he is just easier to talk to. And not twice her age or a couple. 

“The first full moon? Because you said you didn’t remember what happened to you, right?”

“Oh. Yeah. It was, uh, it was a lot.”

“I can imagine. Did you realise what was happening?”

She shrugs.

“Sort of? Not at first. I was healing really well, really fast, according to the doctors, but I hadn’t had an injury that serious, so I didn’t really have a comparison for that. But, uh. I got a really bad rash from the silver jewellery I was wearing. Which like, that happens. And my eyes started to get lighter, and my teeth sharper, and my skin hairier, and like. Suddenly craving meat after being vegetarian for years. And none of those things are inherently inhuman, right, but combined? I mean, I was familiar with the concept of werewolves. So yeah, I made sure I was home alone on the night of the full moon. Handcuffed myself to the bed. Felt really stupid until the moon rose and I realised my suspicions were right.”

“That sounds scary.”

“It was. And then the next morning I woke up, and I had torn the handcuffs apart, and I was absolutely terrified that I had hurt someone somehow. But there was no blood. I had trashed the fridge, chewed up some pillows and the frame of my bed. Shed everywhere. A lot to clean up, but no actual attacking everyone. At least I’m pretty sure. I mean, I have neighbours. There were no suspicious animal attacks in the news or anything. I checked pretty obsessively for the next week or so. Not even an attacked pet.”

“So now you just stay home and trash your place once a month?”

“Hah. No. Got a room mate, can’t expect her to disappear every time. No. I go camping. Found this place that’s good, really remote. Set up a tent. Go a bit feral. Sleep it off for a few hours before going back to the city. The wolf part of me needs, you know. Enrichment. To kill some rabbits and run around.”

Sam nods. Sips from his cup of blood. Emily wonders how they dispose of them. It must be suspicious, right? Little cardboard cups of blood, even if it’s animal blood, in the trash? But maybe it can be explained by some new diet craze. Some high iron high protein idea.

“Room mates are inconvenient. But hey, can’t live without them. Or, whatever, un-die.”

“Is it hard? Keeping it secret? I mean, it’s got to be if you burn in the sun, right?” she asks.

She isn’t totally caught up on the specifics of vampirism yet.

“It is,” he confirms, with a sort of sad little smile, “but I don’t burn. Or, at least, I don’t spontaneously combust. I just get a really bad sun burn and sort of feel like I’m really sick. It’s like. You know when you’ve been ill for a while, and you’re getting better and it’s your first day sort of forcing yourself out of bed and maybe manage to leave your house and go down to the shops at most? It feels kind of like that, being in sunlight. Not a fan, but not like, instant death. Which is nice.”

“Does seem more practical,” she agrees.

“But yeah, the not telling anyone, that’s… it’s hard. And I can’t even- I mean, I haven’t spoken to my family for a long time anyway, but I look… different enough that it would freak them out. Also, for a variety of reasons.”

“No? I feel you. I specifically got the worst webcam I could find to skype my family. They live in a different city, and we’re not close, but… They still sort of try. In a pretty offensive, if well meaning way. They’re pretty… pretty religious. Not big fans of me coming out as bi. And they keep being like oh, well, at least you’re not a lesbian, and expecting me to eventually settle down with a man and have a bunch of children and just. No.”

“That was sort of what mine were like when I came out as queer as well,” Sam says, nodding, “but then a few years later I told them I was trans as well, and they really didn’t like that. So now we don’t speak.”

“I’m sorry,” she tells him, but he shrugs it off.

“Fewer people I have to lie to.”

“Sure, but if you take that to the extreme you’re just going to be like a lonely slightly more modern Dracula.”

“I’m pretty sure Dracula had multiple brides. Which, yes, okay, not ideal. My harem would be for all genders. And he had house guests. And a pack of wolves.”

“Well, you do know three of those,” she jokes.

“True. And I would need a castle. Not enough castles in this city.”

“That is a significant drawback,” she agrees.

-

She dreams of it, sometimes, waking up with the feeling of running through the woods on all fours, the feeling of her claws digging into the dirt, her fangs digging into the hot flesh of a small animal. Because she isn’t really present, for the wolf thing. It is her, she has worked that out now, but it’s strange. Like watching, dimly, from the inside as everything happens, and then afterwards it fades, like a dream.

It’s weird. Not being human any more is weird. When she turns back into a human shaped being, after the full moon, it takes her a bit to get used to walking, again. She keeps unconsciously starting to walk on the balls of her feet, which really isn’t the most efficient way to move when your leg bones are configured like a human. And she keeps trying to move her ears to hear better, to move her tail, only of course she hasn’t got one any more. That’s maybe the weirdest thing. Having a whole part of her body just stop existing. Everything else just moves and shifts, most mammalian skeletons being, after all, relatively similar skeletal structures, but the tail, that’s separate. That’s a whole appendage that’s just gone.

At work a child asks her why she’s so hairy. The mother shushes the little one and apologises. Emily doesn’t know how to feel about it. Ought she be insulted? To jokingly tell the truth? But she fears, if she does, that it will plant a seed of suspicion in someone’s mind, that will grow until they decide to test out how well Emily does in a fight against silver knives. So she doesn’t mention it. Not even when a customer demands she give her a full review of their paranormal romance section. She pointedly suggests everything but the ones that have to do with werewolves. 

No one suspects anything. She is reasonably sure no one suspects anything, and terrified that she is wrong. The revelation of a few weeks ago that hunters exist is something that makes her nervous. What if they find her? How do they work? Do they kill indiscriminately, or target only those who hurt humans? Are there any either werewolves or vampires who hurt humans? There must be, surely, to inspire all the fiction about them, the myths and stories. 

More than a year in, the implications of her existence is still wild. Throughout history, presumably, werewolves and vampires have existed. So if anything is to be believed about vampires and their life spans (or un-death spans?), then surely there must be ones who have lived through most of history. Who are centuries or even millennia old. Who have witnessed human history unfold. And oh, she has a lot of questions for them. They would be invaluable sources to any historian. She knows people with history degrees who would kill for less.

-

That full moon she goes out into the forest, as usual, with her oversized backpack. She doesn’t like hiking. It’s cold and sweaty and everywhere seems infested with insects. She tries, she really tries, to embrace the inevitability of becoming an outdoorsy person, but it’s been challenging so far. It’s not that she doesn’t enjoy nature; she loves it. She just doesn’t love being uncomfortable, and the two are hard to separate. 

It’s getting more wintery, and she is now the kind of person who owns both a summer and a winter sleeping bag. There isn’t snow, not yet, but there probably will be soon. Her breath drifts behind her in clouds as she walks. Last winter she was lucky. There wasn’t actually frost during any of her moons. 

It’s getting pretty dark by the time she gets to her usual campsite. Tall trees circle the tiniest clearing, surrounded on all sides by thick under-brush, and there is just enough space to set up her tent. She glances at the sky. There is just enough time. 

She undresses, shivering in the cold inside her tent. Werewolves run hotter than humans, she has worked out, by a few degrees, but being naked in near zero temperature still feels pretty bad. Destroying another set of clothes, though, is not an option. She doesn’t make the kind of money where she can keep up that sort of consumption.

Emily doesn’t believe any more, not in anything she was taught as a child, but there is a kind of spirituality to this experience. A feeling of being part of something larger than herself, which she appreciates. Letting go of everything, just for a night, and just being. She feels the beginning of it, the presence of the moon as it appears, sees hair starting to thicken into fur on her arms, takes a deep breath, and crawls out of the tent.

The pines loom above, dark shapes against a dark sky, spiky and threatening. Her ears twitch as they move, picking up more and more sounds. A mouse scurrying away, the soft beating of wings as some bird passes above. The cold stops bothering her as the thick fur covers her skin. This part is not so bad, but it does herald the next change, which is her skeleton shifting, moving and repositioning itself. She doesn’t feel the pain. She thinks she might go into shock if she did, but it is still deeply unpleasant. Not painful, but not numb either, a sickening series of sounds and sensations, before her mind starts to drift.

-

She wakes, shivering in her sleeping bag, in the early afternoon. Her skin is sticky and crusty with blood, her hair matted, a few leaves stuck in it, traces of mud. When she shifts, her ribs hurt, and she wonders what she did that it hasn’t gone away yet. Fought a big deer and got kicked, maybe? There is certainly, she sees, opening bleary eyes, enough blood to suggest something larger than a rabbit. The smell of it is unpleasant, and there are bits of sinew stuck between her teeth. 

Swearing at the cold and unpleasant feel of it, she wipes the blood away as best she can, going through half a pack of wet wipes, skin prickling. This part is less bad in summer, but she has to look slightly less like a crazy murderer if she wants to be let on the bus. She hadn’t thought of bringing any the first time, hadn’t though about the fact that even if she transforms back the blood and dirt doesn’t disappear, and she had had to find a stream in which to wash. This, though still unpleasant, is better.

As she walks back towards the road, an hours hike or so, she keeps getting flashes from the previous night. The sensation of biting through bone. Claws tearing skin, blood running down her throat. The wind in her fur, the dizzying view of trees as she runs between them, so much faster than she ever could on two legs. It is horrifying. She wishes she could remember it better. Wishes she could know, know for sure, that she would not hurt a human. That she isn’t actually a monster, that she doesn’t have to be.


	3. Chapter 3

She stands in front of the mirror, pulling at her skin, trying to count the tiny, dark hairs that creep in from her hairline. Looks into her own eyes, trying to gauge exactly how much the colour has changed, and tests her canines with the pad of her thumb, trying to judge whether they’ve gotten even sharper. The changes are so slow, so gradual that it is hard to know how much is being altered, how her face and body is shifting. It makes her feel like the insides of her ribs are lined with dull spikes, pressing into her lungs, her very being, making breathing hard. Lately she can swear her ears are starting to look slightly pointed.

Emily exits the bathroom and slumps down on the sofa next to her room-mate, who is watching some sort of crime drama on their small, old TV that has definitely seen better days, and needs three separate cables in order to hook it up to a computer.

“What’s up?” Ana asks, “you seem kind of… Weird lately.”

“What, more than usual?” Emily asks, joking, though the panic inside intensifies, the spikes sharpening, spreading down her entire torso, now.

Ana does that sort of laugh that indicates she is trying to pretend she’s in on the joke, but really she just finds the whole situation weird. And look, Emily can’t blame her. She _is_ weird lately. But more so than Ana can tell. They watch the show in silence for a bit, Emily not super following, but letting the challenge of understanding who is who distract her for a little while.

“By the way, I got an email reminder that we have to renew the lease soon. You’re still in, right?” Ana asks.

Emily doesn’t reply. It would be so much easier to live on her own, to not have to hide, to be able to spend the full moon at home in a pinch, but she definitely can’t afford it. Not unless it’s a tiny one room fifteen square metres sort of situation, and she’s not sure she can do that, not after getting used to this place, which was a very lucky find.

Her co-workers are noticing it, too. There is an older lady, who has worked in the shop for near a decade, who is convinced that she is in a bad relationship, despite Emily’s repeated assurances that she’s very single at the moment, thank you very much. Another, a guy a few years younger than her, has the opposite opinion, which is that she could fix a lot of her issues by dating him. This, of course, is not an option. Not only is he kind of a self-centred ass, but Emily can’t date anyone. Not ever, probably. Because anyone that looks too close will eventually work out that there is something very wrong with her. But it is nice to know that she’s still normal enough looking that someone would actually date her.

That afternoon, when she gets off work, she gives up, and goes to her hair dresser and gets bangs. The lady immediately guesses why, which, okay, the massive scars aren’t exactly subtle. She still wishes the assumption wouldn’t come immediately, though. But she nods when asked, yes, she wants to hide them. Or most of them; the lowest one goes through her left eyebrow. But it’s one less thing people will look at her for. She’s already started looking away when talking to people so they won’t notice her teeth.

The next meeting, Sam raises an eyebrow at her, but doesn’t further comment on her new look. Probably, he understands. They both have their own way of distracting from their slight inhumanities. He by wearing enough neon colours that it distracts from the pallor and tell-tale twin bite scars on his neck, she by trying to blend in.

“How are things?” he asks with something almost like concern.

“Did you… You know, when you got bit, did you change all at once, or was it gradual?”

She studies the inside of her tiny cup of shitty coffee as she waits for an answer. Somehow actual eye contact is too much right now.

“It was pretty instantaneous, yeah. Or, you know, at least it had happened by the time I woke up. I was dead for like two days, so. Might’ve happened over that much time. Since then, it’s been much the same.”

“Right,” she says, “yeah. That makes sense. More of a frozen in time situation, I guess.”

“Why do you ask?”

She watches him fill his little cup halfway up with blood, and then add coffee to it.

“What?” he says, on the defence, “there’s only so many liquids I am capable of drinking, I only get like three different flavours. I’ve got to mix it up a bit.”

“That smells gross,” she tells him, “I support it. But I ask because… Because with this, with me, the changes are gradual. So slow I can barely tell they’re happening until months have passed, and I’m not sure they have stopped. Like, what if they don’t stop? What if it just keeps going, forever?”

“It tastes pretty bad, too,” Sam confirms, “and I don’t think it will keep going forever. You still look human, I promise. More than me, and I manage to convince people the scars and eyes and teeth are left over from my goth days.”

“You had goth days?”

“We have all been fourteen at some point in our lives, have we not?”

“You can like neon and be goth, I guess.”

“Exactly! Goth is a state of mind. And being undead I think qualifies me more than my fashion choices ever could.”

And Emily can’t exactly argue with that. Nothing more goth than being a vampire, except perhaps building a certain style of churches, or sacking Rome. And it’s a bit late for both of those. It’s got to be weird, being a modern vampire. None of the ideas of history one usually associates with it. Not being infinitely old, just looking like you’re in your mid-twenties when really it’s your late twenties.

“It’s just getting really hard to keep everything secret. To not have.. have a place where I don’t have to hide, you know?”

“I know. There is here?”

“Sure,” Emily agrees, “there is here, two hours a week. I’m debating moving somewhere else, actually. Finding a place to live on my own. Just so I don’t have to be quite so careful, all the time. It’s just stupid expensive in this city.”

“Everything is. I’ve been considering that too, to be honest. I have a mini fridge in my room where I keep my blood, and I keep having to spend money on decoy groceries, just so my room-mate won’t notice I never eat.”

Emily is quiet for a moment, munching on a stale biscuit.

“Hey,” she says, heart pounding a little faster, hands a little shaky, because this is a wild thing to ask someone you’ve known so short, “this is weird, and fast, but would you want to look for a place to share? It would be easier for both of us, you know, not having to hide. And I really want to live a place I can spend the full moon in a pinch. It was a storm, last full moon. Do you know how much camping in a storm sucks? Because it does. A lot.”

Sam doesn’t reply, not immediately, and Emily is about to apologise for being weird and rash when he does.

“You know what? That’s not a bad idea.”

So the next week they start looking for a suitable place. Not too far from the city centre, where they both work, but also somewhere near a bus that goes out to the forests surrounding it. It takes them nearly a month to find a good place, but eventually they do. The rent is a little steep, because where is it ever not, but they can manage. Emily is pretty sure she can get a few more hours at work, and Sam can quit buying stuff to pretend he’s human, which helps too.

It’s a basement flat, in an old building, with few windows, just enough to not be a legally dubious fire hazard, with brick walls that are exposed not so much for aesthetic purposes as by some accident, she is pretty sure. But it’s decently sized, with two large bedrooms, and as far as they can tell the upstairs neighbour is an old nearly deaf lady, so hopefully noise won’t be an issue if Emily does have to wolf out there. The wifi is a bit shit, and it gets pretty cold, but one of them is immune to temperature and the other has what could be classified as a permanent decently high fever, so that too is acceptable.

It’s good. It’s pretty good, living there. Living with someone whom she doesn’t have to hide from. Someone she can talk about all the weird shit with. And since he, naturally, works nights, and she days, they don’t get in each other’s way much, either.

“Someone contacted me,” Sam announces one late night, as they’re watching terrible monster films (none with vampires or werewolves, it’s depressing that they always die at the end) together.

“Congratulations?”

“No, fuck off, about me. Wanting to talk to me. Because of what I am.”

“Someone who can’t shut up during movies?”

“A vampire.”

“What?”

She grabs the remote, pauses the film and sits up properly, ignoring the horrible zombie face staring out from the screen at them.

“Yeah. I think they’re some kind of journalist or something? Said she wanted to talk to me.”

“Shit. How did they find you?”

He shrugs, seeming oddly unbothered.

“Same way you did, I guess. That forum. I don’t have my name or anything, but I needed an email account, and I checked it earlier, and this mail had been there for a month.”

“So what are you going to do about it?”

He shrugs again, walking over to the fridge, getting out a bag of blood and sticking a curly straw into it. It’s pink and glittery, because why wouldn’t it be. Life is weird lately.

“I guess talk to her?”

“Are you fucking crazy?” Emily asks as kindly as she can.

“For wanting to talk to someone about this whole thing is like? I’d have thought you’d understand.”

Emily sighs, and runs her hand through her hair, trying to get her bangs out of her eyes. Good for scar concealment, but an absolute pain all the same.

“What if it’s a trap? The others at the group, they say hunters are a thing. What if she wants to, I don’t know, force feed you garlic?”

“I’m pretty sure I can’t be killed by garlic. Just get real sick. As, presumably, would you.”

“You know what I mean! Stakes, then, or fire. Whatever. My point is, what if she wants to kill you? Or, worse, kidnap and take you to some kind of weird underground lab and do science at you?”

Sam slurps the last of the blood out of the bag. It’s got a blood type and a number on it, and Emily wonders what the person who donated it would think of a vampire having it for a midnight snack. Better than going around attacking people, though. And good for that one terribly unethical hospital worker he buys it from.

“I don’t think that’s very likely. I googled her. Some crazy cryptid hunter. Probably believes in Bigfoot and shit. Totally open about it, too. Probably she will publish it on her blog that maybe a hundred people will read, thinking it’s some stylised fiction horror thing. Besides, I’m meeting her somewhere public. A café or something. Won’t let myself get killed, promised.”

“I still think it’s a bad idea,” Emily maintains, “being a conspiracy nut would be a pretty good cover for an actual hunter. Or like secret horror scientist person.”

“You can tag along, if you want. Sit at the other side of the café making sure she doesn’t kill me.”

“It’s still risky,” she says, “but okay.”


End file.
